Wolverine, Hulk and Jean Grey to Return for Generations But Marvel Won't Say How

Marvel fans pining for the return of iconic characters like Wolverine, Jean Grey and Bruce Banner are about to get their wish thanks to the upcoming event comic Generations.

Generations teaser art by Alex Ross. (Marvel Comics)

Marvel first teased this project last month, promising a massive superhero team-up involving new and old versions of characters like Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, Wolverine and Spider-Man. Now ABC News has revealed more about the scope of this story. Generations will debut in July 2017 and is structured as a series of ten one-shot issues, each focusing on a different pair of characters. The full lineup will include:

Spider-Man (Peter Parker and Miles Morales) – written by Brian Michael Bendis

Thor (Odinson and Jane Foster) – written by Jason Aaron

Wolverine (Logan and X-23) – written by Tom Taylor

No artists for these issues have been revealed yet, though Marvel did reveal Olivier Coipel's cover to the Thor issue.

Generations: Thor cover by Olivier Coipel.

This character lineup includes several currently dead characters, which begs the question of how exactly they'll be returning. Time travel? Maybe Thanos and his son Thane will have a generational team-up of their own and rebuild the Infinity Gauntlet?

Whatever the answer, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso did confirm that the stories will be taking place in regular Marvel continuity. "How did we do this is part of the fun," he told ABC. "Right now, Rogers isn't much of a good guy. Why would Sam want to team up with him? Banner's dead! Logan's dead! These are questions that demand to be seen. What I will tell you is we have an ingenious device [to bring them back]."

"There's that old cliche, 'absences makes the heart grow fonder,'" Alonso added. "You don't take these characters off the board with the intention to keep them off the board forever. One of the tropes of our medium is characters get a second wind. They die and come back. That's part of the beauty of what we do."

This also begs the question of whether any of these dead heroes will actually stick around after Generations wraps up. We're guessing not, but you never know.

Look for Generations to kick off in July 2017 and wrap up in September.